


Letter from a Lonely Devil

by SeasaltStars



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Post-Kingdom Hearts III, growth and healing from past trauma, mentions of past violence and abuse, mentions of self harm, post kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24837949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeasaltStars/pseuds/SeasaltStars
Summary: Giving a voice to the side we didn't get to hear.
Kudos: 8





	Letter from a Lonely Devil

**Author's Note:**

> This has always been a plot thread that means a lot to me, and it's always baffled me how such a horrifying and messed up situation is constantly glossed over, even by the game itself. I'll let the letter speak for itself.
> 
> Please don't comment trying to start a character debate. I'm exhausted.

My name is Vanitas. That's the name the old man gave me. I still don't know if it's really "my name", but I haven't thought of anything better yet. And it's been years. At the time I'm writing this, I'm twenty-four. 

I'm going to talk about what I've been through, during the time since and the time before. The early days. I'm telling you now, it's not nice. It's not pretty. And a lot of it's downright fucked. And I know you're thinking, "really? Calm down edgelord, this is a universe with talking wizard ducks and sentient rat chefs who will cook high cuisine with you, don't make it all angsty". 

But that's the thing. I know many of you already know, that's what my existence has always BEEN. My life has never had that sort of whimsy, that lightheartedness, that happiness. I know you know that.

I'll start at the beginning anyway. 

I'm technically not human in the first place. I was the "dark" chunk ripped out of someone else's heart and given form. That someone was a ten year old boy, beaten and abused by the old man himself, with his own memories barely coherent even back then. Ventus. But the old man had deemed his usefulness expired, and created me in an effort to create his perfect pawn. Something he could beat and break and would still get up and follow orders. 

You may also know that I didn't exactly start as the violent sadist you saw by the end of it all. In those earliest days, I was blank. My form was shadow, my eyes were red, my face otherwise featureless. I was barely indistinguishable from a heartless, or the Unversed I later learned I could create. And the violent urges came later, too. My first emotion was actually sadness at seeing Ventus dying. The old man had to separate us because I went hysterical over it. Ventus. My other half. /Me/. Laying there, fading away. 

The old man tried to dump his body soon after, and that's when it happened. Ventus was the one Sora reached out to, but our hearts were still the same. Just separate. His influence affected me too. A new tinge or humanity sparked inside my heart... and my face changed. 

And it's haunted me ever since. It haunts me to this day. Because /this is not my face/. 

That's when everything got worse.

Even though he wasn't dying, Ventus wouldn't wake. And my newfound "depth" only opened the door for more complicated pain. The old man wasn't one to impart positivity. The sadness dabbled in anger. Anger twisted into hate. And the hate, like a cold iron ball in my chest, became contempt. For /everything/. Especially Ventus. Ventus, who could lay there sleeping peacefully, feeling nothing while I was in so much pain every single day. And these feelings could swing from one to another in an instant. 

When those feelings started to bring out violent impulses, it scared me. I didn't /want/ to be that. I'd have these moments of clarity where somewhere in the fray I'd detach and realize, "what am I? What's happening to me? I don't want this, I don't think this, why can't I be different?" And then I'd cry, and the clarity would pass by the time I was done.

I was ten. I was fucking /ten/. And that's generous because "technically", I was a few weeks old.

Anyway. In one of those moments of clarity, I asked the old man to send Ventus away, somewhere safe. He was awake by then, but still far from lucid. I was surprised when the old man agreed, but I'd figure out much later that it's because he saw an opportunity I never could have imagined. 

I should have left with him. I should have done whatever I fucking could to go with him. Because after he left, the old man's abuse really started. And here's the part where things get rough, if you're sensitive to it, maybe scroll past.

The clearest memory I have from back then is being locked in an empty room for days, screaming, clawing at the door to get out. Which, of course, the old man had sealed with his key, and I didn't have mine yet, so there was no way I could ever get out. That "exercise" is what spawned the first Unversed. That primal fear, that realization of just how much worse things were going to get for me. They repulsed me, so I destroyed them. But when they hurt, I hurt. When something beat them and tore through their "flesh", it felt like something was doing the same to me. And it fed into itself. It intensified my suffering, and spawned more Unversed. When the old man eventually came back, I'd be sobbing in a ball on the floor, buried in them. That was good, he said. It meant I was getting stronger. It meant I could endure. 

The old man himself never laid a hand on me. He didn't have to. His heartless could beat me around easy enough, just like they did with Ventus. But the pain and the bruising and the broken body, I could grit my teeth and cry through. It was the psychological abuse that follows me even now.

The day came where I finally collapsed crying in front of him during "training", after I'd finally summoned my key. The rage, the energy, it was all gone. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't get up, couldn't keep fighting, because why? When nothing ever got better? I wanted to die. I was ten. 

And the old man saw my cries and softened his voice and knelt down and told me how it could all go away. There was something I could do, something that would make the pain stop, and let me live a strong, full existence. All I needed to do was rejoin with Ventus, once we had both grown enough. I would have my life back. I would be whole. The pain would stop.

I was ten. I believed him. 

I had something to work towards. A light at the end of my very long, very dark tunnel. It was Ventus. Of course it was. That precious person I'd sent away because I was a fucking idiot. One day, we'd be together again. And my life would be my own. 

That's when the old man's manipulations started to pile on, and I'm warning you, it gets bad. He'd... tell me things. Tell me ways to do it, ways I could make it happen. I won't go into much detail about them. They started as small "fantasies" at first, but turned into things like "tearing into his chest with my teeth". "Prying open his ribcage and crawling inside". And worse. I won't elaborate. I'm not sure if his magic was involved or if I was just that fucked up or what, but he'd sow these seeds of ideas, and they'd bloom into hideous, abhorrent nightmares in my fucked up little brain. I damn near lived in them. They were my key to happiness, after all. They were what I had to do to make the pain stop. The more he talked about it, the more okay I was okay with it. He started small and worked me up, worse and worse and worse.

I was the perfect pawn. I heeded every order, a cat desperately chasing a mouse. I could summon Unversed on command, easily. It had become as natural as breathing. This went on until he put his plan into motion, and, well. I'm sure you know how that turned out.

After that I went... dormant, I guess. It's hard to explain. I existed, but I didn't. All I remember are snippets of dreams. I wasn't conscious, or whole. 

Then I heard the screams. I'd drifted to a world where monsters harvested the screams of children for energy. 

And they were delicious. That spark returned to my heart. They called to me, and I stayed. Their terror fueled me too. I recovered, and as it turned out, the old man wasn't done with me yet.

I was back, and I was out for blood. I wanted to see everyone who got in my way suffer, and anyone who helped them. I wanted to break them down as I'd been broken down. 

You probably know how that ended for me, too. 

I expected to die after that. I thought maybe that was my release. My only chance of it, in the end. Just fade away. But... I didn't. To this day I don't know why. But I persisted. I woke up sometime later in that graveyard, cold and alone. Empty. First the first time since my earliest days, I felt nothing.

I can't describe how refreshing that felt.

But I needed a plan. I couldn't just lay there forever. I didn't know what to do, where I could go. The old man was gone, and I decided, even if he had still been around, /FUCK/ him. I was done living my life his way. But how could I live life my way? How could I even begin to figure out what "my way" was? I was nothing, I knew no one. The bottom of the bottom. 

So, I went to the only place I could think of. I returned to the Land of Departure. I was going to try and tell them what I'd been through and how I wanted to change. What was the worst they'd do? Turn me away?

Besides, it meant I got to see Ventus again. If only for a moment.

They gave me a chance, and let me stay. Treated me like one of their own, and tried their hardest to understand even if they couldn't. Terra was the best about it, weirdly. I liked Terra. Master Aqua was... hard to describe. Strict in some ways, soft and approachable in others. But I never felt like she understood, not in the way Terra did. 

And Ventus... Ventus.

I tried my best. I wanted to be his compliment. His best friend. His brother. And I think he wanted the same. There's be days where I'd break down and cry curled up in my room, clenching my fists until my nails cut my palms, because that's how I deal with fucking /everything/, and he'd always know, and he'd always come up and sit with me on my bed and hold my hands while he healed the cuts away.

But I couldn't shut out the old man's voice. I couldn't look at Ventus without imagining the feeling of his flesh in my teeth. The snap of his bones. Worse. Always worse.

I never did anything. I'll make that really clear right fucking now. I never hurt Ventus, not physically, not emotionally like the old man did to me. I loved him. I still do. But it wasn't... it wasn't working. It wasn't good for us, even if neither of us wanted to show it. We both had too much to deal with, and they weren't things we could deal with together. Ventus' life wasn't all sunshine and smiles, either. Because of our separation, he could never process negativity properly. Among many other problems. Sometimes he'd get emotionally overloaded and go into his screaming fits like he used to have in the early days. 

So I left. They understood and wished me well, and I them.

... I don't think I'm ready to talk about the details of the life that followed. None of it is good. I traveled from world to world, working where I could, sleeping where I could, but I could never hold down a place for long. I hurt myself so I wouldn't hurt others. My forearms are more scar tissue than clear. There's two huge gash scars on my chest from the two separate times I tried to cut my heart out, and I couldn't, I just couldn't. I laid on the floor in a puddle of my own blood, crying because I was too weak-willed to even follow through with that. I did a lot of self destructive things for even the slightest chance of feeling better. Feeling /something/. None of them worked, and many of them left me convulsing on the floor.

Those years were a fog of that. Running together, nothing special. Just a lot of trying and failing and getting nowhere. It was a complete accident that I met the right person to get me to where I am now.

And after all that, I guess I can say... I really am doing okay now. I'm still hesitant to say I'm happy, like I'll curse myself if I do. And I'm not "better", not completely. I know I'll never be. You can't just... undo all of that. I can't change what I am, at the end of the day. But I can grow and build myself into something bigger than it, and that's what I'm trying to do now.

I now live in a small inn, on a beach where the sun never sets. I picked the room with no windows, because it's up against the cliffsides and another room. It suits me fine. With me is a young man who looks like Ventus but doesn't /feel/ like Ventus, a tall spirit who soothes nightmares just with his presence, and a girl who plaits her hair with pink ribbons and talks to flowers. It's a peaceful place. It gave my my first night of safe sleep I've ever had. I feel like the weight of the world have been lifted off my shoulders. 

I make music now. Most of it involves harsh noise and unsettling rhythms, but I'm not picky. Classical, metal, I mean fuck, the first thing I made when I got here was a K.K. Slider cover of a Rainbow song, because there sure as fuck won't be anyone else who will. I've gotten to see and do things I never had the chance to before. I've played Animal Crossing, Pokémon, danced with a friend, slept in til noon for weeks on end, knowing nothing will hurt me.

I don't feel like I'm just "persisting" anymore. I really do feel like I'm growing. That I'm headed somewhere better, no matter how hard it's been and no matter how many days come crashing down and send me to the bad places again.

If you read this far, thanks. I know it's a lot. I know it's eye-rollingly angsty. But it's been hard, opening up. And even then, I left out a lot. There's no point in saying it. It's just pointless suffering at that point. Still, thanks for sticking with me. It helps a lot, knowing I'm seen. Knowing my pain doesn't just exist in an echochamber. And it's going to sound like some shitty throwaway inspirational line, but to you who made it this far, you'll get better too. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe it'll take years of absolutely nothing before it happens. But you'll get to a point in your life where you stop persisting and start living, too. You owe it to yourself to thrive beyond, in spite of, the people that hurt you. I mean that. 

Thanks for giving me that second thought.


End file.
